Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech, the Catalan quantum computing company that ranks among the European leaders in its sector, announced this Wednesday an initial closing of its Series A funding round, valued at 19.6 million euros. This first operation was led by defense giant Indra, which invested 10 million euros through IndraMind, the group's technological initiative that develops sovereign artificial intelligence. It also served for the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT), the investment vehicle of the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Function, to double down on its commitment to the company with a new investment of 9.6 million.

Globalization and the rise of remote work have reformulated the linguistic component of the Catalan labor market. This is revealed by a study from Pimec and the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) presented this very Tuesday, which points out that English now surpasses Catalan as the language in which job offers are published in the country. In fact, this has been happening since the pandemic: 2020 was the last year in which there were still more job proposals written in Catalan than in English, according to the same barometer.

The stock market debut of Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is one of the most anticipated events of the year. Just months after the record broken by thepublic market entry of SpaceX, Elon Musk's aerospace and artificial intelligence brand, the company led by Dario Amodei could post even more spectacular figures: while Musk managed to list with a valuation of 1.77 trillion dollars, everything suggests that its competitor could reach two trillion. This is anticipated by the initial public offering (IPO) document, leaked by the Reuters agency. The same agency recently pointed out that the IPO could be resolved after the midterm elections in the United States, scheduled for November 3rd.

The banking sector is the protagonist of a good part of the week's appointments. The World Bank has renewed its financial management and the Galician entity Abanca has incorporated a well-known face in Southern European finance to the board of directors of its insurance subsidiary. Outside the banking world, the media tandem formed by streamer Ibai Llanos and former footballer Gerard Piqué enters a new business. At the same time, Just Eat appoints a new financial director for Spain and the OBBIO association renews its board with a new president.

Catalonia maintains its status as a benchmark for entrepreneurship within the Spanish state. This is revealed by data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report, which shows that entrepreneurial activity in the country broke its historical ceiling in 2025. According to the study, the Catalan entrepreneurial activity rate (TEA, for its acronym in English) last year stood at 9.7%, a year-on-year increase of 1.1 percentage points and the highest value in the historical series, which began in 2004. Furthermore, it shows that the gender gap in the entrepreneurial world is practically closed.

Factorial, the Catalan company specializing in business management software, which ranks among the scale-ups most valuable in Europe, has completed its leap into artificial intelligence with the launch of One, an AI agent for companies dedicated to "connecting information and automating work".

The Parliament has approved this Wednesday the law of chambers of commerce. In this way, Catalonia adapts twelve years later the basic state law of chambers of commerce, approved in 2014. Since then, the Principality had been one of the few territories of the Spanish state without an updated chamber law. The norm has passed the examination of the hemicycle with 114 favorable votes, 11 abstentions and 9 votes against.

The state's tourism sector has "maintained its dynamism" during this year's summer. This was celebrated this Wednesday by the sector lobby Exceltur, which highlighted the intense increase in business sales in the third quarter of the year across the entire value chain, at 4.1% in year-on-year terms. Despite the good pace of business, however, the cost environment has been unfavorable: according to the entity, price pressures have caused "the positive performance of revenues not to translate with the same intensity into the results of tourism companies".

The Catalan company Open Cosmos, one of the leaders in the satellite and space infrastructure sector, will deploy 192 satellites for its ConnectedCosmos connectivity constellation. The network will serve, as stated by the company in a press release, to "provide secure and resilient connectivity" while ensuring "sovereignty and control of critical data" at a time when satellite connections have become strategic infrastructures. These satellites will constitute the "core" of the constellation, although the company will be able to "rapidly expand the network's capacity" as demand increases.

The conversation about artificial intelligence has focused mostly on the product. ChatGPT (OpenAI) or Claude (Anthropic) have become ubiquitous on users' devices; and, with them, in the social conversation. Like all technological disruptions of the scale that is assumed for AI, however, widespread adoption is the key to any significant advance. This adoption is among the fields of study of Marta Serra-Garcia, a Catalan economist and professor of economics and strategy at the Rady School of Management at the University of California - San Diego specialized in behavioral economics, who has studied public trust in AI. Serra-Garcia receives ARA at the Ciutadella campus of the Pompeu Fabra University, where she studied and where she has returned to participate in the European Meeting of the Economic Science Association, organized by the center's department of economics.

The Minister of Business and Labour, Miquel Sàmper, stated in a recent meeting with Catalan representatives of the quantum industry that Catalonia "is arriving in time to lead" what is set to be the next technological revolution. Among the fifty companies that, according to Acció, are dedicated to this technology in the Principality, Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech stands out with its own light: the company, which has developed the three quantum computers for the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, is one of the leaders in European quantum computing, an economic field in surprising growth. Its CEO, Marta P. Estarellas, receives Companies at the company's headquarters to talk about a technology that "is a bit scary" and is "not very intuitive" for the general public, but whose applications will be unique and will stand out in the country's future.

The brain, despite the years and resources dedicated to studying it, still holds many mysteries. And this is due, in large part, to its extreme complexity, with tens of trillions of neurons and synaptic connections that control everything that happens in the human body. Among the scientific voices that have set out to build an easier relationship with the nervous system, that of the Catalan Eduard Masvidal (Tarragona, 1992) stands out. This postdoctoral researcher at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2) has focused his research on how new materials and microelectronic technology can help treat neurological disorders as widespread as Parkinson's or epilepsy.

The Catalan technology sector often boasts about the talent pool offered by the country's university ecosystem. Any technology company that remains in Catalonia explains much of its success due to the foundation provided by research and educational centers, which allow access to high-level ideas and professionals without leaving home. Atom H2, one of the rising stars of the country's emerging fabric, is an example: the start-up has developed an alternative to diesel generators that generates and stores energy to support strategic infrastructure. And they did it, as recalled by Anna Martín (Barcelona, 2001), co-founder and CEO of the company, on Fridays after class.

The academic year has begun in Catalonia with a substantial change at the helm of Parlem, one of the key companies of the business independence movement of the last decade. Furthermore, the end of summer marks, for all intents and purposes, the starting point of Marc Armengol's tenure as CEO of Banc Sabadell, with various organizational changes and a focus on digital activity. In the chamber sphere, the Association of Real Estate Agents (COAPI) has chosen its representative to the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce; while the Spanish government has appointed a new Secretary of State for Housing and Urban Agenda.

Artificial intelligence has already slipped into practically every crack of social life. In recent years, since the entry into play of the first versions of ChatGPT, experts and promoters of the technology have asserted that the ceiling for the implementation of AI solutions is exponential; and that the productivity gains they will generate in the short term are incommensurable with other technological disruptions. In a recent speech before Catalan business leaders, the president of Telefónica, Marc Murtra, asserted that "in thirty years in the world of technology, I had never seen such a rapid impact" as that of AI.

The executive chairman of Telefónica, Marc Murtra, has championed the importance of the defense industry before Catalan business leaders. The chief executive of the major Spanish telecommunications company, also former chairman of the industry giant Indra, asserted that "all democratic countries must have a relevant defense industry." At a meeting with Catalan business leaders organized by the employers' association Foment del Treball, which served to inaugurate the economic year in Barcelona, Murtra stated that building defensive capabilities is "especially relevant for democracy," since democratic countries "are recipients of aggression."

Catalonia closes the month of August with the now traditional rise in unemployment that marks the end of the summer season. According to the data published this Wednesday by the Spanish Ministry of Labor and Social Economy, the Principality ended the eighth month of the year with 329,468 job seekers, an increase of about 14,594 people compared to the month of July, 4.63% more. If compared with August 2025, it must be said, the rise is more controlled, with about 2,100 more unemployed people, an increase of 0.64%. In this way, the Catalan labor market moves away from the minimums it reached 12 months ago, when it registered 327,365 unemployed, the lowest figure since 2007.

When going to check your email inbox in Gmail, a multicolored star reminds the user that they have a new companion: "Ask Gemini," suggests Google, in practically every corner of its suite digital. WhatsApp's search engine is no longer a search engine; it's Meta AI, also present on Instagram as an image and text generator. Like X, formerly Twitter, which has placed access to Grok, the chatbot of Elon Musk's. Outside of traditional applications, ChatGPT (OpenAI) and Claude (Anthropic) have become essential on phones and computers worldwide. "The AI era," as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates calls it, has arrived; without permission, but with popular enthusiasm: both ChatGPT and Gemini are said to have surpassed 1 billion monthly users this summer; a usage figure that, as Ariadna Font, co-founder of the emerging Alinia AI and creator of Twitter's algorithmic ethics area, acknowledges, "is dizzying in human terms".

The stock market entries of the two competitors leading the race of commercial artificial intelligence – Anthropic (Claude) and OpenAI (ChatGPT)– are touching. While the market entry of Dario Amodei's leading company is assumed to occur this fall, Sam Altman's tech company "will be a listed company in 2027, or even sooner", according to the company's chief financial officer, Sarah Friar, as reported last Wednesday in a meeting with employees.

"Artificial intelligence could be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of inequality." Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates believes the potential impact of AI – benefits and pitfalls, in equal measure – is greatly underestimated. In a long essay published on his website, Gates Notes, the tech mogul and president of his namesake foundation has detailed the promises and dangers of a technology that, in his view, could dismantle the entire contemporary social structure. "The transition to the AI era will be one of the most turbulent periods in human history. And, as of now, we are not adequately prepared to face it," he asserts.